The grisly discovery of a woman’s body and her separated head on a roadside in Ciudad Juarez last Tuesday brought renewed attention to women in the narcoguerra– as victims or players or both.

In the case of the decapitated woman in Juarez–a first in the drug war according to police and researchers–she was first identified as a former police officer, now working as a human rights advocate. She also had Santa Muerte tattoos on her lower back but that in itself doesn’t mean she was a gangster–despite the hype that Saint Death is the narcos’ patron saint. See report at El Heraldo de Chihuahua.

For more context on this and the nightmares of violence women face in Juarez on a daily basis–read this excellent piece from Diane Washington Valdez in the El Paso Times

(Most cases were “for emotional issues,” said the president of the National Women’s Institute, Rocio Gaytan, because the prisoners sought to introduce drugs into prisons for men, their children or partners.)